


love you but you're green

by wtfmulder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Fluff, On the Run, PWP, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-23 00:58:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9632681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wtfmulder/pseuds/wtfmulder
Summary: During their time on the run, Mulder and Scully participate in a little roleplay that reminds them of simpler times. Gratuitous fluff the first chapter, gratuitous smut the second.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title credit goes to Babyshambles.

There’s a lot to talk about, those first few weeks on the run. Not just logistics – where are we going, who will we be when we get there – but _feelings_ , which, to them, are honestly scarier than the impending alien apocalypse. Why didn’t you just come home? How much do you hate me, Scully? Was this worth it? **  
**

They don’t talk about any of those things.

Those first few weeks are aimless. Except for their visits to various safety deposit boxes and storage units, filled with cash and forged papers and everything else to be associated with a life on the run, their route is convoluted, a mess of dirt roads and cracked-out towns that don’t appear on any maps. They’re heading vaguely east. They’re heading vaguely north. It’s harder to foil the plot when there is no plot to foil. So they don’t create one.

They’re kinder to each other. Gentle. Those first few weeks. The sensitivity training they went through at the Bureau comes in handy; they exploit those hard-earned tactics with a tenderness they will, upon looking back, both cringe and marvel at. They hold hands, he’s always kissing her face. With the exception of a single night, a stolen thing marked in their memories forever by the scents of breast milk and baby powder, their first month on the run is the most in love they have ever allowed themselves to be.

Mulder is a sentimental fool, though, who wishes beyond reason they had afforded themselves this luxury before, when it wasn’t a necessity.

***

They don’t stand out at the Salvation Army thrift store, with his five o’clock shadow and her sleep-rumpled sweater. Everything feels more dangerous this way, like they’re hiding in plain sight. They want to be in and out. They’re just picking up more blankets and a better cooler for the long drive ahead.

But it feels too good to be out of the car, out of a motel room, so they end up taking their time. He thumbs through novels they’ll read to each other in the car, anything, horror, romance, sci-fi, mystery, historical fiction. Young adult. They giggle through the bodice rippers and she tears the science fiction apart. One time, Mulder was halfway through Roald Dahl’s _The BFG_ before Scully had begged him to stop through clenched teeth. 

He throws a few books in his shopping basket and finds her looking through the women’s clothing. Pasting himself along the firm lines of her back, he reaches out to stop her hands from flipping past a truly horrible leopard-print slip.  
  
“You know what I like,” he says lasciviously. She slaps his hands away and rolls her eyes.  
  
“Help me find sleep clothes. I didn’t pack enough.”

Silently they search together, wondering at how terribly the store managed to sort everything. All the sizes blend together and Mulder finds girls’ bathing suits mixed in with work slacks.

It’s a while before something catches his eye, certainly not sleep clothes. He pulls it from the rack to inspect it more thoroughly.

It’s a brown skirt suit, something Scully would’ve worn maybe two years into their working partnership. It’s neatly pressed and smells like detergent, but there are small holes in the jacket pockets and the plaid skirt frays at the hem. Looking at it, he remembers her fluffy hair and her darker lipstick. Her hands on her hips while she looks on at him an exasperation untinged by world-weariness. Even her voice was lighter then, higher pitched, a sound that had annoyed and delighted him to no end.

“It’ll be too big,” Scully warns from behind him. Taking the garment from his hands, she studies it with a wary eye. “And it’s not my color.”  
  
“Just like old times - hey!” He giggles and arches back when she elbows him sharply. But then a sincerity spreads over him like whitewash and he tries hard to hold her gaze. “Get it.”

For a moment she doesn’t answer, letting her eyes travel the worn, gaudy fabric. She seems to be remembering something, too. When she finally responds, it is only with a stiff nod, and the pair haul all of their findings off to the cash register.  
  
***

At their motel room that night, they microwave their dinner and play cards until Scully throws them all on the floor. It’s a joke for sure, but it’s meant to cover up what a sore loser she really is. Mulder imagines little Dana upending a Monopoly board onto the ground in a huff, her brothers yelling at her and Melissa laughing until she cries, and promises himself to pick that game up before their life on the run comes to its most likely devastating end. She’ll kill him. He looks forward to it.

She brings up the suit while he’s playing 52 pick-up and she’s treating his bent-over back like a footrest. “So when am I wearing this thing? Don’t tell me we’re meeting Skinner.”

He bucks her legs off of him like he’s a wild bull, luxuriating in her surprised, breathy laughter. Crawling over to her and resting his chin on her knees, he tries to look as seductive as possible. She raises an eyebrow in suspicion. “Mulder?”

“I was thinking… tonight.” The kisses he presses to the tops of her thighs are in no way meant to be persuasive, no way, not him. He rubs his stubbled cheek against a sliver of belly peeking out from under her t-shirt. “Before we cross state lines.”

Before they cross state lines. Before she loses her name and dyes her hair is his unspoken truth. The box of dye sits in her duffel bag with all of her other on-the-run purchases. She tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls him a little closer, so his face is tucked underneath her breasts.

“I’m assuming you have a particular scenario in mind, then.”

When she’s in his brain he feels it, a pleasant pressure, her high heels clicking over synapses and nervous tissue like they have done in basement hallways. And isn’t that what this is really all about?  
  
He tells her his scenario.

***  
  
“So, what is this?” She’s standing before him in heels and cheap pantyhose and his mouth is too dry to really respond. The suit looks just as frumpy as they used to and it makes his heart flutter a little, like he’s just seen a cute kitten. A sexy kitten. One he wants to fuck into next week. “I walk into the office and - what? Drop to my knees? Give you hints to my completely uncharacteristic lack of panties?”  
  
“Miss Scully, where are your underpants?” He chastises. Running his hands up the back of her skirt and finds her to be true to her word, finds nothing but hose. And soft skin. Soft, wonderful skin. “That wasn’t part of the game.” 

“Oh, Agent Mulder, you look so tense,” she coos, leaning over him to rub at his shoulders. He laughs throatily and bats her away, slipping his hands out from under her skirt to rest on her hips. 

“That’s not what this is about, no. You’re not… seducing me, so to speak.” She starts playing with his tie anyway, the little tease. “Scully. We’re working. On a case. This isn’t professional.”

“Gonna report me to HR?” Her little kisses on the top of his head, the only part of him he’s letting her reach, might ruin this whole thing. He pushes her away.

“You’re at your workstation, I’m at mine,” he starts, straightening his tie and fixing his hair. She’s pouting as she walks backwards to her makeshift work table, played by Random Motel Nightstand #3. “We just finished a slideshow.”  
  
“Trying to set the mood, Mulder? You shouldn’t have.”  
  
“Yes, and the slideshow is about…” he pauses to look at the tabloid magazine in front of him. “Severed Legs Hop to Hospital.”  
  
“Oh no,” she groans.

“That’s the spirit!”

“Are you telling me you used _Weekly World News_ to find cases for us? For legitimate work purposes? You didn’t. Right?”  
  
“Scully, when the entire world refuses to believe you, where might you turn for the slightest chance at validation? These people are desperate, tired of being ridiculed - “  
  
“I’m being serious, Mulder. Did or did you not find cases in _Weekly World News_ and convince me to defend their legitimacy to Skinner? Because if you did, I swear - “

“No, I didn’t,” he lies. Now he’s wondering how these severed legs hopped over to that hospital and her feathers are getting ruffled and they’re both ridiculously off topic. “Anyway, we’ve seen this before. Or something like it. Leonard Betts?”  
  
“He regrew his body,” Scully points out. “That’s different. Does the article say anything about regeneration?”  
  
“Um,” he scans the article for a second and finds nothing about spontaneous limb regeneration. “No, it doesn’t. I don’t think it’s exactly the same thing, but the cases show similarities. I don’t think this is a case of regeneration, though. Some squid and octopi-”  
  
“Octopuses,” Scully supplies.  
  
“Some squid and octopuses, after death, still reach out and suck at anything they interpret as prey. Even upon removal, octopus tentacles will wiggle around and try to bring food to their phantom mouths. It’s a standard party trick at several high-class Japanese restaurants. What if we’re dealing with something similar, where the limbs aren’t making a conscious decision to move, but are reacting to some kind of repeated nervous stimuli after death?”  
  
“The situations aren’t comparable; octopus tentacles contain complex nervous systems that almost function as separate little brains that allow them to sense and pick up food. Human legs don’t work that way.”  
  
“Okay, witchcraft.”  
  
“Mulder, it’s not witchcraft. None of this ever happened.”  
  
“But if it _did_ , I’d place my bet on witchcraft.”  
  
“I-” she is exasperated, and this is exactly what he wants. She’s leaning against her desk with reddened cheeks and her arms are crossed over her breasts and she well and truly wants to tell him to shove these severed legs right up his ass. “Cadaveric spasm.”  
  
“You’re saying _cadaveric spasm_ caused two severed legs to get up, walk themselves out of the morgue and three miles over to the nearest hospital?” He shakes his head. “That’s wild, Scully. Wild.”  
  
“Damn it, Mulder!” She bangs a fist against her table and she’s in this. She’s so in this. It’s like being back in the office. It’s 1993 and he’s trying to scare her out of the basement but she won’t leave and they’re getting further than he’s ever gone before. It’s 1994 and she’s just been returned to him and he’s so grateful he can’t even speak right around her. It’s 1995 and he’s pretty sure he’s in love and he’s terrified, and it’s 1996 and he knows he’s in love and he knows that it’s doomed, doomed, doomed.  
  
“Skinner approved my request yesterday,” he says. “We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Agh!” In three quick strides she’s crossing the room and hauling him up by his tie to kiss the life out of him. Although he had told himself to expect it, he’s caught completely off-guard, unable to do anything but close his eyes and moan as she dominates the hell out of his mouth, forcing his lips open with a jab of her dainty tongue and squeezing her fingers in his hair to hold him in place.


	2. Chapter 2

Is this what it would’ve been like, so much earlier? Before the Darkness was Super Dark and was instead Dark Lite? Yes, he tells himself. Even then it would be her making all the moves, because he’d been the coward then just as much as he is now. He would’ve been so afraid, so completely paralyzed by this tiny, frantic storm pulling at his buttons and biting at his tongue and grinding in his lap. He would’ve been so hard it threatened to pierce through his clothing, just like it did now. **  
**

“Sc-Scully,” he groans into her mouth. She doesn’t pull away to let him talk so he tries to distract her by palming her breast under her suit jacket. It works. “Are you saying you don’t want to investigate this case with me?”  
  
“God,” she hisses, pushing her chest into his hand and flipping her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll investigate anything with you. Just do that again.”

The words squeeze at his heart because he knows it’s true and is weighed down with gratitude even as he is tortured with guilt. He can do this for her, though. If it makes it better.

He pulls her down into his lap, her back against his front, elated that this particular motel chair is wide enough to accommodate both of their bodies and his long, unwieldy legs. They’re in his desk chair and the door is locked because he didn’t want anyone to see his slideshow and laugh at them. They’re facing his computer, the monitor is displaying some random chain letter Langley sent him, files and papers are falling around them as they move together, as he slips his fingers over her knee, under her skirt, up her thighs, to encounter slick, wet heat, right under the nylon, and…  
  
“Shit, Scully,” he groans into her ear, rolling his hips into her back and digging his fingers against the seam of her hose. “You’re not trying to shut me up, are you?”  
  
“Agent Mulder,” she breathes, kicking off her heels and exposing her neck to his clumsy mouth. “Never. Keep - keep talking.”   
  
It’s no surprise they’ve fallen effortlessly back into their roles; once upon a time Mulder stupidly thought they’d be playing those roles for the rest of their lives, and the easy camaraderie they forged in earlier times was always underlined with a twining, heady streak of sexual tension. That’s what he wants to tap into: something light, something fun, something from their past that doesn’t hurt so goddamned much they’re forced to repress it.  
  
He presses little kisses to individual locks of her hair, goodbye kisses, see-you-next-time kisses. It’s longer now but healthier than ever and her shampoo is the same, tastes the same, that maddening scent that once led to weekly embarrassment back in the day.

“Little Dana Scully,” he hisses, pushing down on her thighs to increase the dizzying friction. He can taste the perfume she dabbed behind her ear and it makes his hips jerk, his mouth wet. “Who knew. All this arguing and second guessing-” he punctuates this with a sharp thrust “- and all she really wanted was to be stuffed full with her _partner’s_ cock.”

Her answering moan is a deep, throaty sound that drives him wild. He moves to slowly unbutton her blouse, pausing in between each button to fill his greedy hands with her flesh, her taut thighs, her small, heaving breasts. Her stomach flexes underneath his palms and he holds them there to feel it move, feel her pant. She wants it _so_ bad.

When her shirt is unbuttoned, he separates the flaps with his hands and cups her over her silk bra, a breast in each hand, and rolls his thumbs hard over her nipples through the slippery fabric. She arches into his touch and _wets her lips_ , an action that used to get him in a lot of trouble, still sort of does, but now it’s time to make her pay.

“You think - you think I didn’t notice?” He grunts, slipping his hands up into the cups of her bra and pinching at her nipples. “How you look at me? How you’re always touching me?”   
  
“Wasn’t - “ she chokes, digging her feet into the carpet to gain some traction, to push back against him, do _anything_ , but his grip is too tight and her hose only slips against the carpet. “Wasn’t t-touching you.”

He laughs cruelly at the outright lie, yanks her hand away from her middle and shoves it in his hair. “What do you call this?” He moans as she strokes him, his unruly hair, his forehead, whatever part she can reach. “You pet all your patients like this, Dr. Scully?”  
  
“Just the accident prone ones - _oh_. Don’t _rip_ them, Mulder!” With her arm thrown over his neck she’s blissfully distracted, his own arms wrapped around her waist, so he slips a hand down, down, down, then _up_ , up, back into her skirt. Encounters the hose. Rips a hole in them, right at the seam in the middle, and fucks into her with two long, graceful fingers. “Damn it!”

“Scully, I know you,” he murmurs. “I know you, I know under these severe suits - “ he curls them just so and she’s writhing in his gasp, lifting away from him, trying to get away from his fingers and back onto his fingers and everything in between. He’s slick all the way down to his wrist and he hasn’t even touched her clit yet. “Is a brave, _sensual_ woman who is going to come hard in her partner’s lap in the middle of the work day.”

In his head it’s the first time and he’s never, ever felt the muscles of her cunt work around him, his fingers, his tongue, his cock,  never heard her make _that_ noise before, never seen or _felt_ Special Agent Dana Scully so far gone in the throes of ecstasy she’s forgotten just where the hell she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. It’s all brand new. He is in awe of her, the unwitting spy, the diligent worker, his crack-shot best friend and little slut gasping and shuddering in his arms.

“We _work_ together, Scully,” he breathes. “You’re letting me touch you and we _work_ together. We’re not supposed to be doing this, are we?” He drags his other hand down to thumb at her clit, spreading her legs wide in his lap so that the skirt bunches up around her waist. She doesn’t respond so he stops all movement, trapping her clitoris in between his thumb and index finger. “ _Are we_?”

“No, oh, Mulder, please…”

He rolls her clit in small, teasing circles, keeping the fingers embedded in her at a firm halt. “What aren’t we supposed to be doing?”  
  
“T-touching. We’re not supposed to be touching.”

“You mean…” he slowly starts fucking her again, an agonizing tease that make her wince and roll her hips to keep him inside. “I’m not supposed to be fingering my partner in the middle of assigning a case?”

He finishes her this way, licking at a succulent spot on her lithe neck and rubbing at her clit mercilessly, paying no mind to her hands trying to push him away, or to the way her thigh muscles twitch under his wrists and jerk from oversensitivity. If it’s their first time or their fortieth he’ll never get enough of this, strong-arming her into seeing how perfect they are together, how happy he can make her if she lets him try. Only when she threatens to tumble out of his lap does he relent, reluctantly slipping his fingers out of her and kneading her spread thighs as she trembles.

When she’s made it through most of the aftershocks she turns her neck to kiss him sweetly, something closer to the first kiss they actually shared. It allows him to catch his breath and pull himself together in the aftermath of her incredible orgasm, a sight that has launched a thousand ships in his soul and probably in his groin. Years ago, if he had made his partner come apart like that, _in their office_ , he would’ve  risked ruining his pants. There are definitely some parallels to be made here.

Her tongue is a sleek, inventive thing in his mouth, counting his teeth and testing his tastebuds for any discrepancies. Everything’s accounted for, Dr. Scully, this man flosses. When she grabs his hand he tries to lace their fingers together, but she surprises him by bringing it up near their faces and breaking the kiss to suck on his slick fingers. 

“You’re a _baa-aaad_ girl, Agent Scully,” he says thickly, watching her clean him of her juices with hooded eyes.

“Mmm,” she slides his fingers from his mouth and keeps them pressed to her bottom lip. “Mulder, I think you may be right for once.”

“Say it again,” he laughs, and he traces the outline of her open mouth with his thumb. She bites at him and he lightly flicks her on the nose as punishment.

“I think…” Mulder begins, dragging his eyes over her exposed chest and ruined suit very slowly, a purposeful visual caress. She looks debauched in a way he always dreamed of making her, every bit the product of unspoken lust too many years in the making and enforced professional rigidity. If this had actually happened it would have been the biggest leap she ever took for him. At least at the time. “We’re looking at reanimation. Necromancy. But it went terribly wrong.”

“Okay. Say those legs really walked themselves to the hospital,” Scully replies, all business, holding his gaze as she gently shrugs off her ugly coat. He almost misses it until he catches the sight of her strong, lightly muscled forearms flexing under her tight blouse. Then she shrugs that off, too, and it really does feel like she’s sitting topless on his dick in the middle of their basement office. “Where’s the crime, Mulder?”

“Someone cut off that man’s legs, Scully.” He cups her shoulders and nuzzles her ear. He presses a light, sucking kiss to a spot right underneath it. “We gotta find out who.” He’s unhooking her bra, slipping it down her arms. “Find out who did it with me, Scully.”

His teeth on her earlobe: “It’s - oh, _no_ \- not a Bureau matter.” Wet fingers circling and plucking at her hard nipples: “Did they even find _do that again_ the rest of the body or make an I.D.?” Together they ease the skirt over her legs and she’s exposed completely, her cute little pussy framed by her curls and the tattered remnants of her pantyhose: “How do we know the legs won’t just walk off somewhere else?”

“We don’t know,” Mulder grits out on a ragged breath. Her constant wriggling is making him nervous and the sight of her nude form, so wantonly displayed against his fully-clothed one, makes him feel powerful and sexy in a deliciously shameful way. “Do we ever know?”

“It’s in the job description,” she agrees, and leans back for another kiss. 


	3. Chapter 3

Has there ever been a version of Fox Mulder that isn’t in painfully, frightfully, end-of-the-world love with Dana Scully? The revelation had been less than timely, to be sure. But kissing her now is a thrilling exploration of all the ways this could have actually happened; he sees himself pressing reverent, candle-lit kisses to the small of her trembling back in Bellefleur, peeling her out of her stuffy suit in an unlit Watergate parking lot.    
  
But there’s a reason why he asked for  _ this _ scenario, why this particular fantasy is the starring production, has been the starring production, for a long, long time. He never expected how it would consume him, mind and body and scarred, scarred soul, the moment he left his world crying and clinging to each other in a pale blue nursery. 

It’s the timelessness of it all. Pick any year, day, or time, and find them arguing over the minor details, the big, big Truths, find them exasperated, over-sensitized and so hopelessly in love they’ve lost their ability play well with others, any others. Any day in all the days he’s known her could have led to this, could have started with their scorching, finely-tuned version of verbal foreplay and ended with her torn pantyhose and her lipstick all over his face. No, there was never a version of Fox Mulder who hadn’t wanted this, hadn’t wanted her to be exactly where she is now. Except…

“Hey,” he complains half-heartedly. The pantyhose makes her hips slippery, and he can’t get a good grasp when she slides off his lap and into a distinguished heap on the floor. She looks up at him with her best  _ Are you kidding me? _ face, and this really might have been ten years ago or three. 

“So, Mulder,” she says casually, as casually as she can while she’s unzipping his pants, tugging at the waistband of his boxers and easing them both over his hips. “Do I get the pleasure of examining our… phantom limbs?”

How she expects a real answer when she’s holding his dick like that is the real X-File. “Uh… I don’t think…”

“Mmm?” Her mouth wraps around the weeping tip of him, but looking into her eyes you’d think she’s filling out a field report. Jesus, why does that turn him on?   
  
“They’re. Oh… alive. You can’t,” he sucks in a breath as she grasps him at the base to angle the curve towards her face. “You can’t autop… a liv... thing…”

If she agrees or disagrees he’ll never know, because he’s too busy dying at the feeling of being sucked all the way to her throat. It’ll be a slow death, a glorious one. He’ll let her do the autopsy. Oh, god. Oh lord have mercy.

But then she pulls his cock out of her mouth like she hadn’t meant for it to be there in the first place. “You know Mulder,” she begins sternly. Her withering glare and the firm, twisting strokes of her scalpel hand give off some mixed signals. “You were talking a lot of crap earlier, about that partner stuff. But now I’m sucking you off and you’re not making any sense.” 

“You gonna do this now?” he grits out, rocking his hips up to match her rhythm. His foray into her mouth left him hot and very slick, so much so that a handjob doesn’t seem like a consolation prize. He figures Catholic girls are just better at them, anyway. Her pressure and pace speak to how practiced she really is. “Tell me I’m a bad boy, Scully.” 

“The baddest,” she agrees wickedly, and then ducks down to lick him from root to tip. Damn it. Goddamnit. The tiny, sucking kisses she leaves along his pulsing flesh and the tips of her fingers barely brushing his balls prove to be too much for him, and he hauls her loudly protesting form into his lap before she makes him come all over her face.

The depth and ease of their partnership shine through as they work to lower her onto his cock, her ass cradled into the shelf of his groin and her hands scrambling to gather purchase on the arms of the chair. The position bothers him only a little because he can’t watch himself push into her, knows that if this really had been their first time he’d be obsessed at the thought. The sight of her welcoming him, taking him in with her giving, eager body would lead to his undoing, now and forever. But he takes what he’s given and hones in on the feel of that first slide, hot and wet and so perfect it makes him want to cry. There’s nothing but her cunt gripping at him mercilessly for dear life. There’s nothing but the sight, sound, scent and feel of her writhing desperately in his hold.

His hands slip over her sweaty back and under her arms straining to hold herself up. She needs help lifting, he can tell, it feels too good to be this full and she can’t make herself move. He likes that his hands span the entirety of her waist, makes him feel like a Big Strong Man, but he likes that little squeal she makes when he tugs her up and forces her back down on his cock even more. She swoons in his lap and starts to rock against him in earnest.

Near the end of all of their cases it always stopped being a power struggle and started being some kind of voodoo melding of minds that saved the child, day, world. This is kind of like that. It’s not about her lifting out of his lap or him pushing her back down, it’s about being the same person, knowing every single thing the other wants and needs because they want and need the same. He wants her to move slowly, wants to be buried so deep inside of her he loses himself. She wants to get him lost. 

“I’m inside you, Scully,” he whimpers into her shoulder. This revelation never fails to choke him up. He thinks maybe his entire life he’s been trying to get someone to let him in, and Scully’s ardent acceptance… is the most beautiful gift he’s ever been given. One of his hands slides down from her hip to touch where they’re joined, then tease lightly at her swollen clit.

“My breasts,” she pants, pulling back when he rubs her a little too hard. Sometimes she’s sensitive there after the first orgasm, and he nods with understanding. His fingers are slick with her juices when they glide over a peaked nipple and she tosses her head back at the feeling, quickens the pace of her grinding hips. Her walls tighten around him and he takes it as encouragement to pinch it and thrust into her harder.

“Love you,” he mumbles again and again. He says it every time this fantasy plays in his head. They’re arguing over the Jersey Devil and he’s crying it into her neck as he bends her backwards over the desk. He breathes it to her, fucking apologies into her with his tongue after learning her sister’s died, she’s been diagnosed with cancer, another madman tried to steal her from him forever. Other things change, her hairstyle, her lipstick, the color of her suit, but this is always the same, just like how she always says it back, screams it when she comes.

And oh, does she come. Her pussy clamps around him like the unforgiving vice she’s always been and he can’t keep his grip on her with all the shaking, but it doesn’t matter because he’s falling with her, with her, with her, emptying into her his seed and his love and anything else he has to give, worthless as it might be. Everything he is melts like plastic around her, on her, into her.

For her to be full with him, all of him, and to  _ love it _ , is all he ever wanted from her back in the day. She gives this to him in spades.

***

They move to the bed after the trembling ceases, after they manage to stop touching each other for the five minutes it takes to tidy each other up and collapse into the mattress. They don’t wipe the lipstick off of his face because she thinks it’s funny, and he thinks it’s love. 

“That’s not how it would’ve happened,” she murmurs into his chest. He traces wide, looping patterns on the swell of her hip and considers this thoughtfully.

“No,” he finally agrees. “I never would’ve had the patience to take any of your clothes off.”

Her puffs of laughter against his skin make him pull her closer. In the soft light of the moon, she looks ethereal, wispy, like a hazy curl of smoke drifting past him and into the night. It almost makes him want to switch sides on the bed and he absurdly worries she’ll float away.

“If it had been any sooner…” if we had been any sooner. “It would’ve been…”

“Sad,” Mulder fills in. “Desperate.”   
  
“It was always going to be desperate,” she says softly. “But it would’ve been tinged with a certain sense of tragedy.” 

“I wouldn’t have said those things to you. The first time.”

“You better not have.”

“Never.” He kisses the top of her head.

“Our time was our time. Everything we have is because we were patient.” She turns in his hold to look at him, look at him clearly. She’s wearing that face she had that first night on the run, the one she wore when she made him weep in her arms with her belief in him and her willingness to love him against all odds. “I will never regret waiting, Mulder. I will never regret waiting for you.”

There is nothing to say after that. He can’t say anything, anyway, in fear he might start crying again. He knows what he’s feeling isn’t regret. It’s hope. It’s hope that for every single instance he wanted to kiss her but didn’t, wanted to hold her but didn’t, wanted to make her laugh, or come, or cry with joy, all of that will be made up with time, and tenfold. 


End file.
